Various official theme news

I just wanted to wrap up some various news that has come out since the last time I blogged on this a couple of months ago:

Video game

LEGO has released new heroes and villains posters to promote the video game. Most interesting to me is that these may hint at future sets - oliphants, fell beasts, trolls and balrog.




It looks like you will get a free Elrond figure if you pre-order the game. Preordering will also get you codes to unlock other characters.



Reports are that the game will include 85 playable characters, so you can play through again and again. Here's some other cool promotional art.



Hobbit sets

I'd previously noted a listing of upcoming sets. I'm not sure if I just missed one, or if one has been added, but Brickset reports a list with one additional entry.

79000 Mystery of the Ring (€13) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gollum
79001 Fleeing from the Mirkwood Spiders (€30) Minifigure: Bilbo Baggins
79002 Attack of the Wargs (€60) Minifigures: Gandalf, Wargs (unknown amount)
79003 Bag End (€80) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Balin, Boufer, Dwalin
79004 Escape in Barrels (€70). This is the new listing.
79010 The Orc King (€100) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Orc King

It is interesting to note that this list includes 'Escape in Barrels' - see my previous discussion about the possible ending of the first film. If the film ends after 'Flies and Spiders', this would be from movie 2 as well. Also, the fact that 'Fleeing from the Mirkwood Spiders' lists Bilbo shoots to heck all of my rampant speculation on Radagast.

That set list should be taken with a grain of salt until we see confirmation from LEGO. The one thing we know for sure, of course is the Bag End set. Here is the box art.



BTW, the Flying Dutchman put together his version of the official set based on photos from ComicCon. He had to make a few substitutions because certain pieces are not yet available (or not available in the right colors), but it looks awesome.



John Callen, who is playing Oin in the movie, showed off his minifig likeness on his Facebook page. No word on what set this will be in.



Board game

The Hobbit board game is now on shelves (the official release date is October 1, so you may have to wait a week to find it in your local store).



It seems to be essentially a memory matching game where you turn over tiles and try to make pairs, but there is also some component of moving figures around.



Captain BeerBeard picked up a copy. Here is a close-up of the microfigs.



He also posted the tiles. I'm happy that they don't seem to be stickers.